Scrawled in Wax

The web makes it rather hard not to have opinions. The constant rush of new information, media and art means that the way we situate ourselves in life – which is to say, the way we position ourselves in relation to the culture around us – is constantly undergoing change, in part because it is constantly under attack.

Twitter is so full of expressive exclamations not because it is a platform for inanity, but because it is a place for people to publicly inscribe their stance. When somebody complains about ‘public transit hygiene’, prejudice or how “Nick Carr is so totally wrong”, they do in part to condemn, but also to assert their own perspective against the perceived threat. As Bhabha suggests, each inscription “is always marked and informed by the ambivalence of the process of emergence itself”; put more simply, once you acknowledge your own process of interpretation, you open the possibility for other, legitimate interpretations.

The internet, then, is full of polemical exclamations. I am guilty of these myself. Still, perhaps the unending flood has done something to solidity and certainty. Enter Kevin Kelly, on what the internet has done to the way he thinks: [via Mark Bertilis]

For every accepted piece of knowledge I find, there is within easy reach someone who challenges the fact. Every fact has its anti-fact. The Internet’s extreme hyperlinking highlights those anti-facts as brightly as the facts. Some anti-facts are silly, some borderline, and some valid. You can’t rely on experts to sort them out because for every expert there is an equal and countervailing anti-expert. Thus anything I learn is subject to erosion by these ubiquitous anti-factors.

So, those of us who, through some strange assertion of will and ego, have designated ourselves ‘bloggers’ or ‘writers’ feel compelled to enter in the debate – to mark out territory, but also to inscribe ourselves into the public space.

* * * * *

Up pops some new idea. It doesn’t matter what it is. Literacy. eBooks. ‘The Death of Old Media‘ (good lord, I’m sorry internet). And then people spin themselves into a tizzy articulating their opinion on the topic. By people, I naturally also mean me. I live for that shit.

So this is the game. Culture happens and cultural critics pontificate. The entire critical game – this massive, overlapped network of discussion and debate – has become its own sphere because it becomes like the ‘ego, inscribed’ writ large – not so much in terms of personalities, but world views. Critical debates – whether Foucault vs Derrida, or Apple vs. Google – are ways of marking out differing views of constructing reality. This is easy to detect. Read Roger Ebert’s critique of 3D film, and it’s not hard to parse his conception of what the world should look like.

* * *

So, the other day I stumbled upon a solid post by Russell Smith over at the great site Ryeberg. It’s on Pomplamoose, the band that has become famous mainly because of their ridiculously catchy covers. You can probably guess where this is going. Smith – a writer who I used to quite like before he started saying ignorant things about the internet and stupid things about being a dude – has developed a reputation (in my mind) for being a defender of the old guard.

The piece is subtly titled “Die Hipster Scum”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our pal Russell is not a fan”

Why does Pomplamoose continue to focus so on covers of mainstream pop songs? Well, this is pretty much the definition of a certain kind of postmodernism: the idea that there is nothing original in art, that everything is a reference. And that every perception is filtered through a haze of mass culture, the omnipresent noise, so all art might as well be about, in some way, Beyoncé and McDonalds. And that there is no difference between a parody and an homage, that one laughs at everything one admires anyway, that irony is so unavoidable that it is impossible to differentiate from seriousness.

There is something defeatist and basically not brave about hipster post-modernism – and this goes for the domains of visual art and literature too. If you claim to believe that there is no possibility of original art in an age of reference, you are cleverly avoiding the nauseating stress of being original. It’s too easy. And you shouldn’t believe it, either, because it’s not true.

Thing is, Smith has a point. It’s the same point I’ve been making for a long time, if less articulately and less derisively. But it’s a cogent argument. Sure, it asserts a belief in what art is and what art is not. But so what? It sounds convincing. I mean, I’m convinced.

Isn’t that the point. We read and immerse ourselves in this ongoing dialectical process of debate in order to mark out our own Hegelian teleology in miniature? Isn’t the point to call out what we think is wrong or misguided in order to make the world a better place?

Well, sorta’

* * *

Long ago, others were also discussing Pomplamoose (Smith operates in ‘print time’). In December 2009, here’s what Robin had to say about the videos:

What I love about the approach is that it’s show­ing us a com­pli­cated, vir­tu­oso per­for­mance, but mak­ing it really clear and acces­si­ble at the same time. It’s enter­tain­ing, but it’s also an exer­cise in demystification—which of course is exactly the oppo­site objec­tive of every music video, ever. Their pur­pose has been to mys­tify, to mas­quer­ade, to mythol­o­gize in real-time.

Even live per­for­mance videos mys­tify in their own way: “Jeez, how did they get so good?” What I appre­ci­ate about the pro/per, at least in Pomplamoose’s hands, is that it acknowl­edges: Yes, to make music, you need a lot of tools, and you need a lot of tries. And I really like (maybe even need) the notion that things can be assem­bled. They can be built from parts, improved piece-by-piece. You don’t have to do it right the first time through. That’s what Pom­plam­oose seems to be say­ing, and showing.

This is distinctly different from Smith’s take. Instead of critiquing through positioning Pomplamoose in relation to history, Robin talks about the possibilities in both interpretation and inspiration produced by the video.

It’s not isolated. Instead, it’s the reason that Snarkmarket – and Fimoculous before it – became my ‘homes away from home’ on the web: because there was this relentless push to give the positive spin when, quite literally, tens of thousands of other voices were giving the opposite. If you were looking for hope as we slip and stumble into the murky future, in these sites you find some comfort.

I’m not the only one who has noticed this. The other day, in the midst of one of ‘our’ breathless, excited comment discussions, Gavin said this:

When Robin in par­tic­u­lar talks about a big new thing, he’s usu­ally not really mak­ing a big claim of “this is the new nar­ra­tive,” or “this is totally dif­fer­ent than any­thing that has existed before.” What he’s usu­ally say­ing is “I can totally see how some­one could use this to do some­thing great.”

To which the response is not “eh, I’m not sure that this is really new,” but “go, man, go!”

Should “Go, man, go!” be the new critical rallying cry?

The question is this: in this pulsing mass of public critique in which we all etch ourselves out through inscribing our difference, our likes and dislikes, does optimism have a kind of politics? Does the relentless insistence on the positive spin produce a kind of force, not only rhetorical in nature, but of a kind of energy that, when compared to the relentless criticism of most cultural critics, results in altogether more creation? What does it mean to be presented with the headlong rush into the new and embrace it by finding the hopeful in it? There’s a sense reading Smith that he is, in a way, “right”. But in another – in a sense far more broad, and more concerned with what criticism and analysis produce – I’m left feeling there’s something wrong.

Such an approach relies on a kind of critical categorical imperative: I critique in the manner I would wish all others to critique. But that kind of universalism ignores the reality of the massive expansion of the critical conversation. You are no longer talking to other academics or writers. You are talking to the whole world.

This is a question of scale. The sheer variety of opinion online exercises a kind of rhetorical drag. It weighs. It looms. The near-infinite rhizomatic mass lingers menacingly each time one sets proverbial pen to paper. There is a reason our age has given rise to the term ‘takedown piece’.

Robin in particular (sorry to single you out dude) has managed to somehow sidestep or ignore this. I mean, it’s not like he can’t do the negative critique, as if he doesn’t know enough. It is, like in those fundamental parts of us involving faith and politics, a measured, considered choice. I will give the positive take.

You might object: well, it just makes sense to take the measured approach – the one that considers and weighs, and then comes to a reasoned, balanced conclusion that says “here is the good and here is the bad”.

But to put it differently – and to reveal the impossibility of anything but inscribing the self through one’s choices – what place do you want to carve out for yourself: the person who critiques the hipsters?; or the person who abandons themselves to hope?